Emotional Espionage
by MelissaRose85
Summary: Sometimes leaving the one you love can be the best alternative. What Kagome would do to let Sesshoumaru lead a happy life. SessKag.


A/N: So, uhh...yeah. I'm hiding from my big story. These little ones pop into my head and I twist my life around and--BAM! New story! Anyway, Sess/Kag, blah blah, nothing to big, and so on, and enjoy! Quotes are W. Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece" and "Sonnet 36."I believe both are severely under-recognized(?) even though "The Rape of Lucrece" is my fave work of his. Scholars tend to look down on it, but I think he beautifully words Lucrece's pleas and arguments to her tormentor. Oh, if I had his genius...unfortunately not.

Disclaimer: I'm contemplating moving back home. I obviously own nothing.

**"Emotional Espionage"**

_And that deep torture may be call'd a hell,_

_When more is felt than one hath power to tell. _

_(The Rape of Lucrece)_

_Let me confess that we two must be twain,_

_Although our undivided loves are one;_

_So shall those blots that do with me remain, _

_Without thy help, by me be borne alone._

_In our two loves there is but one respect,_

_Though in our lives a separable spite,_

_Which though it alter not love's sole effect,_

_Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight._

_I may not evermore acknowledge thee,_

_Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame;_

_Nor thou with public kindness honour me,_

_Unless thou take that honour from thy name._

_But do not so; I love thee in such sort_

_As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report._

_(Sonnet 36)_

His soulless eyes upon the battlefield broke her heart. She knew he had seen her moment of weakness that cost them a good deal of warriors and decidedly lengthened the battle against Naraku's evil.

The hanyou now lay defeated across the field, but she did not reach for the jewel. Instead, she laid her own pieces on the ground and silently walked into the woods, leaving all of them behind.

Her walk was solitary and silent and her direction singular: the well. The one place she could leave them in peace and without her presence. Her heart was so weary and her brain so muddled with thoughts that his arrival before her was hardly noticed until she ran into him--literally. Her devastated eyes met his searching golden ones, and she asked herself how she was supposed to _not_ love him, but, oh God, how was he supposed to love _her_ after that? Her eyes spoke those questions easily, and his searched her face for meaning, for interpretation.

"Where do you believe you are headed?"

She sighed, deep and ragged, feeling her heart rip and shatter and tear and--how could she handle such pain? How could she leave him for his own good? Was there any way possible to explain such a motive? _Of course. Emotional espionage._ She liked the sound of that. But who was she committing espionage for? Against? Who knew why she felt such actions were needed?

"I'm leaving." His eyebrow raised minutely, his face seeming apathetic and cold. _Please, _she begged, _hate or love or scream, but don't not care_!

"Indeed. Allies, duty, past events mean nothing to you, priestess?" _Of course they do!_

She said nothing.

He nodded.

She watched as he 'hnned' and walked into the misty shadows of the forest and she realized, deep down, that he was leaving her not because of a mistake she had made, but because she had blatantly told him she didn't care. She wanted to scream at him, run to him, kiss him, love him, all of it at once but it was impossible.

She was a disgrace.

She was human. She was fallible. She was a priestess. She was his half-brother's best friend. She was not of this world. She was not of nobility. She was not strong. She was no warrior. She was--she was the one who had allowed Naraku's escape from the trap they had set. She was the one whose barrier fell. She would bring him gossip, ridicule, hatred, censure, and so many other things he did not deserve in his already hard life.

She was leaving, damnit.

She might spend her life miserable and alone, in love with a man who would never be hers, but he would be happy. That was all that mattered.


End file.
